"Balkanique" French WW1 issue folding knife.

[Nephilim]

I have an old ring locking knife from France, and I've learned a bit about its history. In french, these ring locking jack knives are usually called couteau à palme, because the back spring resembles the shape of a palm leaf when viewed from above. This sort of locking mechanism goes back at least as far as the 18th cen. and can be found on knives from Spain, France and Italy, primarily. You can see a modern example in the South African Okapi and a few others.

This example has a tang stamp reading Balkanique and a handle of an unknown synthetic (celluloid perhaps). From what I've read, the "Balkanique" trademark was registered in Thiers in 1914 and tens of thousands of these sorts of knives were ordered for the war. The pictures I've seen of other examples usually have the name stamped prominently on the side of the blade, while this one has small tang stamp.

Most of these have wood or horn handles, but this one does not. Feels kind of plastic-y, hard enough that you can't easily mark it with with your fingernail, and much more translucent than horn. The shape in a bit irregular, bulging around the pins retaining the backspring. Its difficult to say how much this might have shrunk over the last century, as this knife doesn't have metal liners. If you know more about early 20th cen. celluloids/plastics, please chime in.
Here's an English language blog post about this style of knife: https://knives-of-france-blog.com/palm-knife/
And here's a French language forum post about a Balkanique knife specifically: https://couteauxdepoche.forumactif.com/ ... balkanique

[kootenay joe]

Thanks for your informative post
kj